J*A*S*M

In horror, the topic o rape and revenge is usually featured in the kind of exploitation trash that has lots of explicit violence, nudity and only a superficial sketch character psychology. But the creators of this film went against the grain and wrapped the subject into an arthouse robe. If you’re looking for another I Spit on your Grave or Last House on the Left you’ll be very unpleasantly surprised. The way the creators approach the genre is manifested, among others things, in the very slow pace, the confusion at the beginning and, unfortunately, the very unlikeable characters. Their psychological portrayal is a lot deeper than what is common in similar movies, but the fact that one is worse than the other doesn’t contribute much to the viewer’s comfort, which, of course, corresponds to the story and it’s a rational creative choice. In short, this film is not supposed to be “liked” and in that sense, mission accomplished. On the other hand, it’s very stylised, with long poetic shots in nature and several boldly explicit sequences, so even people who are not too much into psychological dramas will have something to look at. Objectively, it’s well made, but not really for me – I’m sure I won’t be watching it again.

I don’t expect anything from modern Russian horror because I never get anything, The Widow in that sense is an exception, I thought it was a decent spin on The Blair Witch Project. Scary forests work on me better than probably any other horror setting, so if you give a group of actors a camera and let them wander in the woods at night, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get a friendly rating. That said, the characters and the story are not worth talking about and the climax fizzles out without any proper escalation. Oh the other hand, kudos to the creators for not screwing up the atmosphere with the awful digital effects Russians tend to prefer. Overall, it’s nothing to write home about, but to me it’s more enjoyable and better horror than any of the films by Svjatoslav Podgajevskij.

This horror anthology about a mad scientist researching human phobias in a secret facility turned out to be about nothing. Unlike many other anthology movies, Phobias feels quite coherent and compact, but what good is that when there’s nothing interesting in it. Before each segment, I googled the phobia the episode in question is named after, and in most cases you need a lot of imagination to find any connection.

In his feature debut, BenDavid Grabinski came up with a fairly original and fresh premise, but I feel he didn’t quite know what to do with it. It’s not very solid, it’s an “interesting” film that sort of crumbles between your fingers. The banal climax that relies on revealing the dishonesty of the relationships among a group of friends is something we’ve seen in tonnes of other conversational dramas, and I think this could have gone somewhere else given its interesting premise.

A series of short radio plays delivered as a TV show. But every now and again, why not? They are small and simple stories about a mysterious phenomenon that allows people to make phone calls across time, and it’s linked to other, not very pleasant, apocalyptic consequences. A few episodes manage to build pretty tense situations (4*), while in others the interactions between the characters are pretty unconvincing (2* - 3*). But overall, it’s alright.

For me, a pretty tragic sci-fi anthology; the only part worth some attention is perhaps the second segment, which among the rubbish stands out for the solid atmosphere of the world on the other side of the door and a few nicely unsettling events. Other than that, it’s a waste of time with lazy scripts and funny performances. The final story on Zoom is downright hilarious.

Unfortunately, I can’t go further than average. The setting of a remote road in the middle of the woods at three in the morning is nice, the suspicion between the two lead characters generates the necessary tension and the character of the mysterious supernatural figure who’s after blood is also fine. But as the runtime progresses, things become generic and the script suddenly doesn’t know what to do with those characters to make their behaviour and interactions feel convincing or natural. The final twist is there basically because it has to, but what can you do about it today… On top of that, the craftsmanship lacks precision, it’s shot more like a cheap direct-to-video movie than something worthy of attention. Genre fans won’t regret dedicating those modest 80 minutes to it, but the rest should probably go for the older and thematically similar Dead End.

Exorcism films are among my least favourite horror subgenres, they hardly ever bring a fresh approach or something original, most of them follow a precise template. In this sense, I appreciate that The Seventh Day is one of the few cases in recent years where the creators kept an ace up their sleeves – at least in terms of the story. Conceptually, I think it’s very well put together, which makes me even more sorry for the utterly dull execution; it deserved to be more impressive, the potential was there. They could have gone further with the scary scenes or the gore, or made it more formally distinctive, or if they’d at least refrained from dropping that interesting twist half-assedly about 40 minutes before the end, making the story lose its effect and end up, well… the way it did. It’s also a shame that the protagonist, the young father Daniel, doesn’t have even a hint of charisma.

Four years of annoying whining by teenage fanboys turned into a four-hour long comic book flick packed with a digital mess and an ugly style, and with heroes that are so cringe-worthy that it’s almost embarrassing. The only good thing is that I don’t remember anything about the original shite (Whedon’s cut), so I could take Snyder's cut as a fully new experience. What should be acknowledged is that at least the story doesn’t have any narrative gaps – that’s the only thing I remember from the original version: that it was very rushed and senseless as a result; Snyder's version is certainly not rushed. The problems for me remain: the characters are not even a bit likeable and the moment things go from the realistic interiors and exteriors to CGI action set-pieces what we get is an aesthetic holocaust. That’s something that hasn’t change from last time. That said, it’s nice to make people happy, especially in times like these, and if Snyder's cut fulfilled that goal, I’ve got nothing against it. Though I’d wager that 99% of the people that will like it already know it before watching it.

A fully standard and unsurprising ghost story about a family who gets in trouble after their child (typically, retarded or somehow traumatised) makes friends with an imaginary figure that is not quite imaginary. In the decade that has passed since Wan’s Insidious, we’ve probably had dozens of similar films and it’s quite boring already. That said, objectively speaking, this Swedish attempt has a solid execution and performances, and the monster in the end looks fine. That’s pretty much all that can be said about it, this is the kind of film you already know without watching it.